Exit Music

A good term, a good class.  I thank all of you for your help in furthering my thinking.  A little closing tune.

Worth a Few Minutes

Give this a look.

Plotinus

Digging around in my notebooks, I came upon this quotation. I failed to note who I quoted (don't make that mistake in your notebooks), but the quotation fits Plotinus:

He then offers his discovery, not as a detailed ordnance map with every woodshed in place, but as a cluster of hints, goads and lures, inviting the reader to a companion voyage of exploration..

A Reminder: Everyone's First Drafts are Shitty

Read the essay.

Another translation of Monday's Reading

http://classics.mit.edu/Plotinus/enneads.mb.txt

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Reading for Monday, Nov 10

Read the entire tractate.

Richard Smith: A Conversation with Henry David Thoreau

The Mountain Goats - Going To Queens - 3/1/2008 - Independent

Reading Poetry

A link to a funny, suggestive essay about reading poetry.  Some of the advice works for philosophy too.

Poetry Reading

I will be reading from *Stony Lonesome* on Tuesday at 7pm at Wake Up Coffee.

Matthew Boyle, Additive Theories of Rationality

You should start working on this paper.  It will be an important part of our thinking about A's De Anima.

Upcoming Events

There is a free lunch reception on Monday from 1115 to 1245 in Eagle's Nest South.  The Philosophy Department is hosting the event.  All majors, minors and students in upper-level classes are invited.  Please come.  Who says there's no free lunch?

If you are a poetry fan, I am giving a reading from my recently published book, Stony Lonesome.  It will take place at Pebble Hill at 4pm on Tuesday, Oct. 7.

In Honor of Aristotle's Categories

The Categories

I will be concentrating tomorrow on Categories Chaps 1-2.  I hope that you will have read the entire book.  But, at any rate, give the first two chapters a careful re-reading to prepare for tomorrow.  We will be at work on the Categories until Wednesday of next week.

Here's a little help with Chapter 2.  If you look closely, you will see that A is making a fourfold distinction:

A.  species and genera in the category of substance
B.  individuals in categories other than substance
C.  species and genera in categories other than substance
D.  individuals in the category of substance.

A's list of categories is:

1. substance
Socrates is human.

2. quantity
Socrates is five feet tall.

3. quality
Socrates is wise.

4. relation
Socrates is older than Plato.

5. place
Socrates is in Athens.

6. time
Socrates lived in the 5th century

7. position (posture)
Socrates is sitting.

8. state (vesture)
Socrates is wearing a cloak.

9. action
Socrates is cutting a stone.

10. affection (passivity)
Socrates is being scolded by Xanthippe.

Busman's Holiday- Hoped too. (Some Homecoming Weekend Music)

The Structure of Socratic Ignorance

I mentioned this in class Friday--a little piece I whipped up for a Philosophy at Mama Mochas meeting.  It should seem familiar, since I was working from memory of it Friday.  We will bear down harder on knowing and acknowledging tomorrow.

Plutarch on Alcibiades

Read it here (in the North translation).

William Temple on Plato's Vision of the Ideas

To us the Ideal Theory is myth, as it was to Plato in the later period.  Prof. Burnet wrote recently of the myths–“They have their roots in something older than philosophy, and possessing a vitality which is denied to philosophical systems.”  And just before he had pointed out that Aristotle, who begins with accepted facts and ends in myth, has always been a pillar of orthodoxy, while “most heresies come from Plato” because he insists on scientific treatment of ultimate questions.  This is no doubt true; but this distinction is rooted in another.  Here, as in all departments of human activity, the ultimate fact is temperament.  Aristotle was bound to produce a philosophy which would be a basis for orthodoxy, for, colossal as was his intellect–perhaps the greatest in history, –he was by temperament a churchwarden; and Plato was bound to be the philosophic father of many heretics because he was by temperament a Titan.  There is an inspiration in the spectacle of the old philosopher tearing in shreds his proudly built philosophy and beginning it all afresh.  But among his actual works what I have called “the old Ideal Theory,” which he himself rightly discarded, is worth more to mankind than the method of division elaborated in the Sophist and the Politicus…[This] may be of great scientific value, but [it imparts] no impulse.  The Ideal Theory, as held by Plato in his middle period, may be myth; but it is the outcome and expression of something more valuable than any specific doctrine, however true–of intellectual courage that refuses to allow any sphere to be set beyond the reach of knowledge, of mystic vision in which all that is mean and sordid disappears, and the temperamental fire without which no great achievement is possible in action or art.  –Mind 1908 (Vol 17 No 68)

Allan Bloom on the Erotic

http://deakinphilosophicalsociety.com/texts/bloom/closingoftheamericanmind.pdf

The line I had in mind today is on the top of pg. 4, beginning with "What a thrill it was..." and ending with "An admirable confusion."  Bloom's book was controversial in the 80's; I think it is largely forgotten today.  Still, the chapter I've linked you to connects up interestingly with what we have been reading and discussing.  I hadn't thought about this book, or this passage, in years.

Socrates and Alcibiades